Triple treat of erotica from an explicit artist

By Daphne Guinness

12 May 2010 — 5:09pm

MORE controversy is about to descend on Sydney in the name of art.

First, there was Bill Henson with his provocative images. Now there is the late Arthur McIntyre's erotica with not one but three Bad Blood 1960-2000 retrospectives at Hazelhurst, Macquarie University and Eva Breuer galleries from Saturday.

Arthur McIntyre ... painted porno pictures by the hundred.

"If he were alive today he'd be rapt," says his long-term friend Brian Phipps. Astonished too. In the '70s, the artist's sexual paintings got up the noses of the establishment, their flagrant genitalia and explicit messages shocking sensitive viewers. People fled his collages of erotic venereal disease in terror.

When his show Life, Sex, Death & Decor was opened by Jim Mollison at Holdsworth Galleries in 1995, it was to be the precursor to an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, but his sponsor withdrew in favour of a sports event. The Holdsworth closed, fashions changed "and in the art world, as I am sure you know, one has enemies", as Phipps puts it.

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And McIntyre – very good-looking, charming, and he knew it – had lots of those.

"He complained he was so good-looking people looked at his head instead of his painting," says Phipps.

Jealousy and bad blood gushed. A stint as art critic for The Australian turned into a nightmare. Covering a Jackson Pollock show in Sydney, he judged several as fakes. The painter's widow, Lee Krasner, agreed, the show was closed and the article appeared without McIntyre's byline. He kept the invoice for his $50 payment and, to set matters right, rewrote the story for Art Monthly.

"But the rug was yanked from beneath him," Phipps says. "He never got over it."

Then there was a fracas at the Art Gallery of NSW when Fred Nile complained about a so-called obscene painting, which was pulled out.

"Arthur's review called that immoral, at a time when artists were supposed to be showing what they thought," Phipps says. "Art administrators hated him for that too."

So McIntyre was a bit of a character. Painting porno pictures by the hundred, at home in the bedroom, backyard or wherever he was. Scaring nervous bigwigs, adored by enlightened loyalists (Mollison, Di Yerbury, James Gleeson, Victor Rubin, state galleries, the Australian embassy in Paris), he was bipolar and difficult to live with.

"He could be the most lovely and charming person and a total arsehole, to put it into the vernacular," says Phipps.

By 2000, he had stopped painting. By 2003, he was dead, aged 57.

Phipps was left a legacy of a mountain of pictures and, "with the business sense of a gnat", he had no idea what to do other than put them in storage, costing buckets.

Enter Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Bad Blood's curator and in love with McIntyre's work. He knew what to do. Take three years to research the artist then show with Hazelhurst and Macquarie, letting Eva Breuer handle sales.

"I have never been more passionate about a project," he says. "This one has been an absolute gift . . . to bring him back to life is fantastic."

And if there's a sudden rush of Henson hysteria, how will he cope? Phipps hopes not for a knee-jerk reaction but for people to "address the context of the work".

Come off it – wouldn't it be grand if everyone stormed the place?

"Yes, yes. I was only kidding. It would be great."

Phipps still has lots more pictures at home. Will there be another show? "I hope with these three exhibitions people will come to know Arthur and I'll place the rest into homes where he will be loved."

Smart move for a chap with the business sense of a gnat.

Arthur Mcintyre: Bad Blood 1960-2000. Paintings at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery, Gymea, May 15-June 27; works on paper at Macquarie University Gallery, May 19- June 26; sales at Eva Breuer, Woollahra, from May 22.